In an opening scene of the new film Fathom, Michelle Fournet sits at her computer in the dark, headphones on. The marine ecologist at Cornell University is listening to a humpback whale song, her fingers bobbing like a conductor’s to each otherworldly croak and whine. Software converts crooning whale sounds into the visual space of craggy valleys and tall peaks, offering a glimpse at a language millions of years in the making.
On opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean, scientists head out onto the water. In a mountain-fringed bay in Alaska, Fournet makes repeated attempts to talk to the whales, playing them a painstakingly reconstructed rendition of a yelp that she thinks may be a greeting. In French Polynesia, behavioral ecologist Ellen Garland of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland listens to humpback songs, mapping how they are tweaked, learned and shared by whales across the South Pacific. These settings are stark and gorgeous, their isolation artfully shown through silent, foggy mornings and endless cobalt seas. In a film fundamentally about oceans filled with sound, ample quiet rests on the surface.
On opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean, scientists head out onto the water. In a mountain-fringed bay in Alaska, Fournet makes repeated attempts to talk to the whales, playing them a painstakingly reconstructed rendition of a yelp that she thinks may be a greeting. In French Polynesia, behavioral ecologist Ellen Garland of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland listens to humpback songs, mapping how they are tweaked, learned and shared by whales across the South Pacific. These settings are stark and gorgeous, their isolation artfully shown through silent, foggy mornings and endless cobalt seas. In a film fundamentally about oceans filled with sound, ample quiet rests on the surface.
